


Valkyrie

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:06:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: "You see, as I understand it, part of the point of being a sniper is that you don'thaveto be in the middle of the action. You have a rifle that can hit someone over a kilometre away, enhanced vision--" Angela taps two fingers on Ana's right cheek, under her eye, "--and yet this is the third time in as many months that you've been in my infirmary after a mission.""The mission isn't to be a sniper," Ana says. "The mission is to accomplish the objective and get your people home safe. Sometimes that means getting your hands dirty."





	Valkyrie

**Author's Note:**

> If Blizz can be all *handwave* about their timeline, then I can be too.
> 
> Thanks, as always, goes to [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/), for the beta and for cheerleading this every step of the way. ♥

Ana has come to expect the look of judgment on Angela Ziegler's face. She's found herself in the infirmary again--a mission gone sideways, a need to come down from her perch and help with the evac, a couple of bullets grazing her torso and one that more than grazes her arm--and she finds herself, again, seated on the edge of a hospital bed and being waited on by a pair of impossibly-young nurses while Angela stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips. It's not the first time, and Ana's sure it won't be the last.

A smile threatens Angela's face, although Ana will do her the courtesy of pretending she hasn't noticed. "Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how sniping works." 

"Good evening to you as well, Dr. Ziegler." Ana inclines her head and hides her own smile.

Angela comes into the room and shoos one of the nurses aside to take the bandages herself. It's not that bad, really; it could have and should have been mostly fixed by the biotics on the dropship, but worse injuries than hers had taken precedence and she'd needed to wait until she got back to HQ to get looked at.

"You see, as I understand it, part of the point of being a sniper is that you don't _have_ to be in the middle of the action. You have a rifle that can hit someone over a kilometre away, enhanced vision--" Angela taps two fingers on Ana's right cheek, under her eye, "--and yet this is the third time in as many months that you've been in my infirmary after a mission."

"The mission isn't to be a sniper," Ana says. She hisses a little as Angela applies pressure to her wound. "The mission is to accomplish the objective and get your people home safe. Sometimes that means getting your hands dirty."

"Or getting shot?"

Ana gives her a wry look. "Not if I can help it. Sometimes it just cannot be helped." 

Angela's bright laughter rings through the room; Ana laughs as well, despite the pain in her arm. The second nurse looks between them, wheels the biotic lamp over to within arm's reach of Dr. Ziegler, and makes what looks like a tactical retreat.

As Angela maneuvers the biotic lamp, tilting and moving it so that it shines its healing light directly onto Ana's wounds, Ana gives her a sidelong look. "Surely you have better things to do than look after me. You have a whole department to run--and I also heard that tonight is supposed to be your night off." 

Ana _had_ heard that. One of the medics who'd done triage at the dropship when they got back had expressed surprise that Dr. Ziegler was in the infirmary this evening. _She never stops_ , the medic had said, shaking her head. _We got word you guys were coming in injured and there she was, night off be damned. I'd think she didn't trust us, if this wasn't just what she did. Maybe someday she'll learn to relax._

Angela tugs on the biotic lamp once, twice, moving it almost imperceptibly, huffing dissatisfied breaths out through her nose. "Overwatch's second-in-command was injured. If that's not a situation that requires my attention, I'm not certain what is." She looks at Ana and huffs again. "Sometimes it can't be helped."

Ana's not sure what to say to that, so they sit in silence for several long moments until she, mercifully, changes the subject. "I hear that the swift-response suit is nearly ready for testing. That's quite an achievement."

"If it works, hopefully it will prevent people like you from needing to make visits like this to the infirmary. To do the kind of concentrated healing that a medical facility can do, in the field--"

"It'll change the way we operate entirely, as an organization."

Angela smiles. "It's why Overwatch brought me on. I'm just doing my part."

"And a very impressive part it is." 

Ana touches Angela gently on the arm; Angela startles, touches her fingers to Ana's before stepping back out of reach. 

"Don't work yourself too hard, though. Take your nights off. You _need_ to, in the long run, or else you won't make it."

"I'm not, that's not--" Angela stops, takes a deep breath and straightens her posture before trying again. "One of us is the doctor here, Captain Amari, and the other one of us is in no position to make medical recommendations."

"I could make it an order," Ana says, straight-faced, although she grins and winks as soon as the look of surprise appears on Angela's face. "It's not an order. Just look after yourself, okay?"

"I will. I promise."

With that, Angela doesn't quite storm out of the room. Ana's arm is already feeling better, but she sits under the biotic lamp until one of the nurses comes back in to check on her. When she leaves the infirmary, she pokes her head into Angela's office, just to make sure, but the room is empty. Ana's glad she's out for the night, taking her much-deserved time off, but still, a feeling of disappointment twinges in her chest at not getting to see Angela's face again.

.

The next several months are busy for Ana, meetings and missions and several prolonged family fights over vidcall. She doesn't end up in the infirmary again, but she does run into Angela in the officers' lounge late at night a couple of times. Angela is in a tank top and sweatpants, her hair tied back sloppily, a cup of what Ana's guessing is coffee in one hand while the other scrolls through data on the tablet that's balanced on her lap. Ana, in her own pyjamas and robe, a cup of hot tea on the counter in front of her, has no room to chide Angela about being up at so late an hour, so instead she joins her on the sofa. Ana asks how it's going, and Angela says that it goes, and they sit in comfortable silence together.

She's a little surprised when she gets the invite to the practice range for the swift-response suit demo. It's not that she thought Angela ought to be giving her updates during their late-night meetups, but after they'd talked about it, she sort of expected--

No matter. The suit is ready for demo now, and if it's even half as good as Ana thinks it will be, it will be amazing.

She joins Jack and Gabriel and Torbjörn and a number of Angela's people in the control booth, looking down over the practice range where Angela herself is wearing the swift-response suit--Codename Valkyrie, Jack tells them--and holding a long staff and looking understandably nervous. Jack thumbs on the intercom and tells her that they're ready when she is.

Angela gives the booth a thumbs up and then presses a button on the wrist of the suit. A complicated metal mechanism unfolds on her back, and Ana stares at it hard for a moment before it resolves itself: a pair of glowing wings.

Ana gasps softly. Next to her, Gabriel lets out a low, impressed whistle, Torbjörn grins, and Jack says _well I'll be damned._

Angela is the only human in the practice range, and she demonstrates the suit's capabilities on several of the training bots, healing the ones programmed to be friendly to her with a beam of directed biotics projected from her staff. When the bot moves away from her, the beam stays locked on. And it turns out the wings aren't just for show--there's some kind of gentle propulsion built into the suit, and Angela is able to fly between the friendly bots with relative ease. (It's a little wobbly, but that appears to be Angela herself not quite used to the motion rather than any fault in the suit. If it's Torbjörn's work, and it looks like it is, there's no fault in the suit.)

They're all suitably impressed--Ana knows she surely is--and they're ready to finish up when one of the training bots clips Angela. The bullets aren't deadly, they mostly just sting, but she cries out regardless, obviously unprepared. She stops in her tracks and takes three more bullets before she falls to the ground.

.

Afterwards, it becomes an argument in Jack's office. Jack is certain that the Valkyrie suit needs more armor. Torbjörn points that adding armor adds weight, which will make the suit slower, which in turn will make its wearer more vulnerable and more likely to _need_ the armor. Ana says that it's irresponsible to send their medics out into the field, to send _anybody_ out into the field, unprotected like this. As soon as people start to recognize that agents in swift-response suits are defenseless, they'll become easy targets. If not armor, then what?

Gabriel suggests a weapon of some sort, using the staff as a club, or even adding a handgun--and Angela speaks up for the first time, saying, very clearly: " _No_."

Ana probably shouldn't be surprised, but she is.

"The people wearing this suit will be medics, not soldiers. We don't _shoot_ people."

"Not even in self-defense?" Gabriel asks.

Angela crosses her arms and sets her jaw, her face like a storm cloud. "I'm more than happy to heal for you, but I won't harm others. The world has seen enough violence, Commander, without my adding to it."

"Things happen in the field that you can't predict," Ana tells her. "You make decisions you don't expect, in the heat of the moment. The sniper winds up in your infirmary. It cannot be helped."

"I know myself, Ana," Angela says, the stormy look not lifting. "I can help it. We're not adding a gun to the Valkyrie kit."

They talk in circles for another hour.

.

Ana doesn't see Angela again officially for a couple of months.

She sees her plenty of nights in the lounge, though, curled up with her coffee and her tablet and, occasionally, a full schematic spread out on the coffee table. Ana's not sure when or if Angela ever sleeps, but surely Angela is wondering something similar about her. Angela doesn't say much at first, and Ana is content with that--she'd be lying if she said she didn't like spending time with here, with her. There's something about these late nights, the way Angela smiles at her and the way it puts her at ease, that makes her feel a decade younger, invincible.

Ana starts putting a pot of strong coffee on when she starts the water boiling for her tea, and the thankful look that Angela gives her every time sets something fluttering in her stomach.

Eventually, Angela tells her about the progress they're making on the suit. They're still working on it, but the plan is to hook the biotics into the suit itself, triggering them automatically when the wearer takes damage so that the medic won't have to worry about her own health so much while she focuses on the agents she's accompanying into the field.

"That's clever!" Ana says, looking over the schematics Angela has laid out on the table. It won't prevent the harm, but it'll give the medics a fighting chance without requiring them to actually _fight_. It's a great solution, and Ana is genuinely impressed--too often these days it feels like she and Jack and Gabriel have to compromise on their principles to do the work that needs doing within all the damn bureaucracy.

She looks up from the schematics, and Angela looks away quickly, color flooding her cheeks.

One night, Ana must nod off on the sofa. She wakes up as the first light of dawn peeks in through the lounge window to find a blanket tucked around her. Her teacup, which she's sure she'd been holding, is set carefully on the coffee table.

Ana's not sure what these late nights are, but she likes them. 

She thinks maybe it was a lucky coincidence, to catch Angela alone like this so consistently, but then one night she makes her way to the lounge at 0200 and doesn't find Angela. Instead, she finds Jesse McCree. He's sprawled across one of the chairs with a book, wearing sweatpants and a worn t-shirt that says US ARMY on it in big blocky letters.

"Evening, ma'am," he says, hiding a yawn with the back of his hand.

She smiles carefully and moves to the counter, where she fills up the kettle and prepares to make her tea.

"Gotta say, didn't expect to see this many people up and about in the middle of the night," McCree says, setting the book down on his chest and watching her with some interest. Ana realizes suddenly that she'd been starting a pot of coffee that she had no intention of drinking, and she quickly goes back to the tea kettle. She's going to ignore the hint of a smirk on McCree's face, she decides. That's better for both of them.

"I see two of us, McCree. You weren't expecting to see any other people, at all?"

"At two in the morning? Not really." McCree grins. "Certainly not in here. Figured anybody who had access to this place would be getting a good night's sleep right about now."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you." The water is boiling now, and Ana sets her tea to steeping and leans back against the counter.

"You'd think! But no, here I am, and here you are--and you just missed Dr. Ziegler, she was in here but packed up pretty quick when I showed up, said something about not wanting company while she works."

Ana keeps her expression placid. "Is that so?"

"And here I thought we were friends." McCree sits up and puts his book on the coffee table. "So what are you doing up this late?"

"Trouble sleeping," Ana says, which is mostly true. She's been restless, job stress and family stress and a sense of something coming on the horizon that she can't quite see. She's thought about going to the doctor and asking for something to help, with the sleeping, with the worry, but--her work isn't suffering, not yet, and a good night's sleep would mean missing out on this.

Well, not _this_ ; she likes McCree but not _that_ much. She follows that train of thought to its logical conclusion and thinks, _oh_. 

.

Ana ends up missing the suit demo. 

Her mission goes abruptly sideways when Mirembe doesn't come back from her patrol, and they spend an extra week tracking down the omnic separatists who'd taken her and getting her back. When they finally get back to base, she drags Mirembe and Singh to the infirmary to get checked out. Mirembe's week had been incredibly taxing, for obvious reasons, and Singh had gotten clipped with some kind of sleep dart during the extraction. When they get to the infirmary, the nurses take one look at her and pull her aside for a check-up too. Ana hadn't thought she was in that bad of shape, but as they start cataloging the injuries she'd picked up over the course of the week, she finds she has to agree with them.

One of her team brings her the tablet from her office, so she can at least begin catching up on things she missed while they were out. At the top of her list of messages is one from Angela Ziegler, and she opens it to find video of the demo she'd missed. Dr. Ziegler looks absolutely stunning, wings spread behind her, a look of serene concentration on her face as she flies from bot to bot in the practice range, healing them as she goes. She takes one or two hits, but shrugs them off easily; if it didn't feel silly, Ana might say she looks _angelic_. Ana skims the text attached to the video. It sounds like Angela is suggesting and Jack is agreeing to--

She looks up at the sound of someone clearing their throat, and there stands Angela in the doorway. The look of judgment is nowhere to be found.

"Please say yes," Angela says.

Ana chuckles in surprise, then winces when that hurts her ribs; the wince draws Angela into the room, close into Ana's space, where she fiddles with the intravenous pain medicine that one of the nurses had administered earlier. Ana watches her, the silence waiting for an answer Ana isn't sure is _yes_ yet. Instead, she asks, teasing, "Do you have some kind of alert set up for when I'm in here?"

Angela goes pink and changes the subject back immediately. "Ana, please, _please_ say yes."

"What makes you think my team is the right one for you to test your suit in the field with? The assignments we get are dangerous; you're usually in here tsk'ing at me for getting hurt on my missions when it should've been safe."

"The assignments you get are the ones where the Valkyrie suit would be most useful. And you get your people home safe. I can think of no better test." Angela looks down at her hands, then back up at Ana. "I trust you."

"Plenty of other people do the same for their teams," Ana says, her eyes searching Angela's face. It's probably the medicine and not Angela's close proximity that's making her feel better, she tells herself, but there's no real way to know.

When she answers, Angela's voice is low. "I don't want somebody else. I want you."

Ana smiles. "Well, we'll have to see what we can do about that."

.

The mission is simple: get in, extract the chancellor, get out. Piece of cake. Ana watches and orchestrates from her perch, directing the team down this alley, up that side street, past the patrolling guards when the time is right. Nobody gets more than scrapes and bruises, and the comms chatter is upbeat. Her team is impressed with Dr. Ziegler and her Valkyrie suit, and, Ana has to say, she is as well.

Ana makes the mistake of thinking that maybe this won't be an appropriate test mission after all.

Everything goes wrong at once. One second, Ana's got eyes on her team and the chancellor and what _ought_ to be all the guards. The next, there are twice as many guards, their escape route is cut off, and somebody's got a gun to the chancellor's head.

Everyone is still for a long, tense minute. Her people drop their weapons, raise their hands, try their best to look non-threatening. They wait for Ana to tell them the plan.

From her sniper's perch, Ana puts a bullet between the eyes of the guy who's got the chancellor. He drops, and all hell breaks loose.

Ana trusts that her team will be able to hold their own and make their way out. They're capable, professional, and have gotten out of worse jams than this before. They grab the chancellor and make a run for it down the path Ana is clearing for them, following the trail of corpses to the exit. They make good progress and good time, Ana always focused ahead of them, leading the way, until she hears Angela's voice, shaky, on the comms: _man down_. 

Ana's scope whips around to find the group split, Angela, Thibodeau, Kiriakis, and the chancellor separated from the rest of the agents by a throng of big, ugly guys with even bigger and uglier shotguns. Thibodeau's already on the ground, and Kiriakis is standing valiantly between the hostiles and her teammates. 

Ana snipes one, two, three, but there are too many of them. Thibodeau climbs agonizingly to his feet, and Angela heals him through another onslaught, but it's not enough--he goes down again, and then Kiriakis does the same. Ana's still shooting too, and the rest of the team is trying to make their way through the melee back to them, and it's just Angela and the chancellor. 

_Ana_ , Angela says on the comms, her voice wavering.

 _You'll be okay_ , Ana says, trying to sound like she believes it. _We're coming for you. Hold on._

Ana takes out three, four more, but the way Angela's been backing away has drawn the last one out of Ana's direct line of sight. Ana swears. Two feet one way or the other and she'd have a clear shot, but this--

Angela steps into her line of sight. Even from here, Ana can see the way she takes a deep breath, straightens her spine, centers herself, before she drops her staff and runs at the last one. She ducks gracefully as she passes where Thibodeau had fallen, and comes back up with Thibodeau's handgun, which she fires wildly at the hostile. She hits him pretty solidly in the shoulder. The hostile, surprised as hell, falls to the ground flailing, clutching at his shoulder while Angela finishes the clip into his chest.

The chancellor looks shocked. Angela looks shocked. Ana is sure that she looks just as shocked, and she watches, agape, as Mirembe and the others make it back to them. Somebody grabs Angela's discarded staff, and a couple of the others grab Thibodeau and Kiriakis, and they all head out to the dropship.

The ride back is quiet. The chancellor is, of course, thankful to have been rescued, but she's painfully aware of the cost of her rescue. Everyone's giving Dr. Ziegler a wide berth. There's blood smeared on the Valkyrie suit and a distant look in Angela's eyes, and none of Ana's team knows exactly what happened, or even how to ask about it.

Ana doesn't quite know how to ask either, but she deliberately puts herself into Angela's space, sitting close but not too close, letting her make the first move. And she does--she scoots in close to Ana, sets her hat in her lap, and rests her head on Ana's shoulder. Ana lets her head lean over onto Angela's, and they stay like that the rest of the way back to base.

.

There's plenty of business to attend to when they get back: they hand off the chancellor to Jack and the people from the UN, they hand Kiriakis and Thibodeau off to the medics, they head to the infirmary themselves. Ana checks in with each of her people, making sure they're doing okay, and sets up a time tomorrow for debrief.

That just leaves...Angela.

Ana finds her in her office. She's peeled off the layers of the Valkyrie suit; the overcoat and armor are gone, and she's down to the blue and white leggings and the dark undershirt. She's slouched down in the chair behind her desk, her head resting in one hand, her hair disheveled, exhaustion on her face. 

Her expression goes--complicated, when she sees Ana, and Ana hesitates in the doorway.

"I am sorry that I couldn't bring you home safe," Ana says. She steps inside, lets the door slide closed behind her. "You were amazing out there, Angela, but I couldn't--"

Before Ana can finish the sentence, Angela is on her feet and has closed the distance between them. She backs Ana up against the door, takes her face in her hands and looks at her for a long moment. (Is she waiting for Ana to say no?) Then Angela kisses her, hard. When Ana gasps, Angela licks into her mouth, and all of Ana's resolve melts away. She grabs at Angela and pulls her close, tugging at the hem of the undershirt so that she can get to Angela's skin. 

Angela moans, grinding down against Ana's thigh. Ana lets her, breathless, moves so that Angela can get better friction, runs her hands over the expanse of soft skin she's discovered under Angela's shirt. Angela moans again, and Ana kisses her again, again, again.

Angela pulls away, her mouth curved up into a delicious smile, and Ana watches, enraptured, as Angela tugs the shirt off altogether, down to just her bra. She realizes she has on too many layers herself--she hadn't come here expecting _this_ \--so she shrugs off her coat and her boots, tugs off her hat and her gloves, unhooks her armor and her holsters, discards them all in a heap on the floor. When she's down to her bodysuit, she hesitates, pushes Angela back against the wall this time, threads her hands through Angela's hair and kisses her again.

Angela reaches for the zipper at Ana's throat. "Can I?" she asks, leaning back just far enough to give Ana an uncertain look. Ana's mouth quirks thoughtfully for a moment, and then she nods.

Ana's body is--she's proud of it. It's borne her well through the years, taken all the punishment she's given it, crouched and healed and taken fire and given birth and saved the world. It bears the marks of all these things, tells the story of how it's served her, how she's lived, and while it's not the same body she had at twenty, she loves it all the same. It's _hers_ , and she tells herself that if Angela doesn't like it, if it's not what Angela's expecting, well, that's just too bad.

Angela unzips the bodysuit, from the throat to the waist, and her fingers hover over Ana's bare skin for a moment before she touches her, lets out a reverent breath and then kisses her again, her fingers digging into Ana's side, her touch electric. _Gorgeous_ , she murmurs, and Ana feels herself flush, happy.

As Angela grinds down on her again, Ana lets her kisses fall from her lips to her neck and then down towards her collarbone. She unhooks Angela's bra, and one hand rubs at a nipple while the other strays further down, towards the waistband of Angela's leggings. She pauses there, until Angela nods breathless confirmation. "Please, please, _please_ \--" Angela whines against Ana's hair, and Ana is happy to oblige.

Angela gasps when Ana's fingers find her clit. Ana kisses her, nipping at Angela's mouth, capturing each soft exhale as her fingers skates in soft, slick circles. Angela goes quiet, her body drawing itself up taut like a wire, and Ana plucks it tighter and tighter, quicker and quicker circles, wetter and wetter, until Angela collapses with an exhale and a gasp. Ana soothes her through it, not stopping, and Angela tosses her head back and forth against the wall and she murmurs Ana's name.

"More?" Ana asks, her lips against Angela's neck, and when she feels Angela nod, she presses a finger gently inside of her. Angela rocks forward, pressing down hard against Ana's palm. The noise that Angela makes when Ana adds another finger is absolutely filthy, and it shoots right down Ana's spine, makes her tingle with want. She lets Angela set the pace, and together they coax one orgasm, then another out of her, Ana's name like a song in her mouth.

Angela shudders when Ana finally pulls out, and she leans heavily against the wall, grinning. The look on her face is a little awestruck, even now, and Ana smiles back.

Ana's still not sure what this is--mission-gone-wrong, glad-we're-alive sex; or sex that Angela's going to regret; or maybe even the start of something that she's still afraid to hope for--but she's glad it happened, regardless.

...it's still happening, apparently, because as soon as Angela gets her legs back under her, she grabs Ana's hand and pulls her across the office to the sofa that's up against the far wall. Ana wonders for a moment-- _if she's got a sofa in here, why did she need to spend all that time in the officers' lounge?_ \--before Angela strips her the rest of the way out of her bodysuit and out of her underwear, pushes her down on the sofa, and buries her face between Ana's legs. Ana doesn't have time to feel self-conscious about anything, because Angela's tongue is _wicked_ , and all she can think about is the warm, wet scrape of it against her clit. She is less quiet than Angela had been, her toes curling and her voice loud, and she lets loose a string of profanity when Angela adds a finger, flexing gently up inside of Ana in time with her tongue. Ana comes with a yell, her fingers twisted in Angela's hair, Angela's eyes on her, and when Angela crowds up above her to kiss her, she can taste herself on Angela's lips.

The sofa isn't very wide, but then again, neither are they; Angela tucks herself in against Ana's side and lets her fingers trail gentle patterns across Ana's abs. It's soothing, a nice contrast to the stars behind Ana's eyelids earlier, and even though there are still things she has to do today, Ana can feel herself drifting towards sleep.

"Teach me to shoot," Angela says quietly.

Ana blinks awake, surprised. "What?"

"If I'm going to be wearing the Valkyrie suit into the field, I'll need to know how to shoot. I want you to teach me."

"There are probably better people to teach you how to shoot a pistol," Ana begins, but Angela cuts her off.

"I don't want somebody else. I want you."

Ana presses a kiss to her forehead and smiles. "Yes, okay. You have me."


End file.
